DARLING, BE DARING

Wednesday, September 17, 2014

Lemme Limp (Imported Culture)

Lemming is a doomed conformist, who blindly follows others and brings destruction to all. Are we ambiguous? Are we easily influenced? If so, our rich cultural heritages will be invisible in the lives of Bhutanese in a while, and it will have acquired new forms and meanings that will implant it with contemporary importance.

Culture is important and it has become a pivotal approach for the county’s survival. Sikkim was not subjugated because of weak rulers, land, or religion, but because of its flimsy cultural resistance. Sikkim had a similar culture to that of brother India. So it was easy to put on their map. I think we survive because of diversity; we must maintain our unique diversity to live on happily and not necessarily import others to become one.

Many of our spiritual practitioners believe that the culture is the faith to the god. They pursue and peruse from far across the borders and what they practice would have cultural effects in our country. That’s why we mixed religion with traditions. Our culture was never and was ever a religion. The faith or belief to the god is little or no distinct to culture. The culture is our traditions, customs, and ways of life. Our civilizations, ethos, and philosophies are all our culture, but not the religion. We take care of culture, and by and by the religion has become a culture. Culture has dominated religion. It is not the real religion. Suppose our lifestyle; the ceremonials, rituals, and festivals are just our formal procedure, and I would like to say they are only religious convictions.

Ask anyone. “Does religion change?” the answer would be obvious “NO.” But inconsiderate thinkers may feel that religion changes. That is, as a result, our culture keeps on changing. We can’t really catch up with the culture. Different cultures will keep on trespassing in, owing to different times. What makes Bhutan Bhutanese? It’s our unique culture. It’s our unique citizens. It’s our ethos and values of our life. It’s our culture, not religion.

But in this globalized world, we have brought in many different cultures and practices. Bishwas Karma Puja was not a Buddhist culture for instance. The noisy loud Hindi music is never our way of musicking. We never decorated vehicles with appliqué clothes and sindoor on our Lhakhangs. We have a simple way of doing our own rituals, like sprinkling holy water, lighting incense sticks to the car or any object. What we called ‘Lhapsang.’

I am concerned with this, in Bhutan some think, embarking on development means embarking on other cultures and traditions. Especially our young people are inclined to exploit and expose to all other values and beliefs. Change doesn’t mean adapting to other cultures and losing one’s cultures.

Bhutanese Losars, mask dances, etc are gradually taken over by Christmas, Diwali, free dance styles and violence. Indian and Western films, songs, cultures have made our ways. They were never a mass culture of a Buddhist country like ours. These cultures have intercepted and became a serious norm nowadays. People talk of GNH, conserving traditions, culture, peace, and tranquility. I think being in what we have is the basic GNH of all. There is no need of adopting ideas in cultural and spiritual heritage simply because they come from developed and powerful countries. We have rich values in ourselves already.

These coming months are the month of festivals, crops are being harvested, Tshechus are coming up in many Dzongkahgs, Birth Anniversary of fourth king celebration, but nothing would be most enjoyable than Dausheri to many people. It is celebrated everywhere, in the school compound, in the street, in the village, everywhere. I remember people dancing to the Hindi music, getting drunk, and shaking like Shakira. Everyone would laugh, and all would enjoy. That was happiness. We get happiness from others’ values which are not our internal happiness. We are masala; mixtures of so many other items. We are interested to behave like others. But do Indians, Korean, English, etc dance our type of dances? They may not have heard about our traditional dances, forget about making them dance.

For a few weeks from now, a singing of Bailoram, Dausheri will almost knock you out from the peaceful sleep. The distant song of Dausheri would remind us of a picturesque scene from some sort of Ramayana film we watched. We barely would open our eyes, as it might be midnight. We would sleep thinking, ‘Why is Bhutan only India? And why is India not Bhutan?’

Note: This is the article I posted already in 2013. (http://saachad9.blogspot.com/2013/11/lemme-limp-imported-cultures.html). Little changes have been made.

Saturday, September 13, 2014

Reading Week

Darla school observed reading week from 8-13^th September. We have designed different activities for different classes. We have random reading, selected reading, book talk, quiz, and mass reading. Our theme of the reading week this year was ‘Learn to Read and Read to Learn.’ And there is nothing that we had to explain on this theme. We also said ‘Read Charo Read’ so that they could read and share with their friends, encourage friends to read, and learn something.

This year we had Readers Theater by classes’ pp-III. It was nice to see them reading and acting. We awarded them prizes for their hard works. We also had one English and Dzongkha reading every day by the assigned classes. And followed by a book review and quiz. One of the most interesting parts of our reading section this year was mass reading. On Friday, we deducted five minutes from each period and made time for the mass reading after the seventh period. For one hour, everyone; both teachers and students came out from the class and read outside. Some sat in a round circle and read with their class teachers. Some even sat on the steps and read. Some walk and read. It was quite interesting to see students and teachers engrossed in reading something.

I have this rhetoric question now. “Am I reading enough?” Yes, I have been reading, and I have read hundreds of books. My bookshelves are filled with all old collections of books beginning from Hardy’s novels, Dickens, Chekhov’s work, and the latest books of Robin Sharma, Paulo Colhoe, etc. I encourage my students too. Paradoxically, I feel, a man is the richest in the world, even if he has nothing. He has a royal casino to Casanova, top to bottom wealth and he commends thousands of men. You can call him the man of plenty because he does plentiful reading.

You know, the amount of tang you get is more than what I would like to call ‘loose talks,’ because in these ‘loose talks’ we always ridicule, make fun and talk about desires and illicit relationship, and not so good a word-gibberish.

In the book, you are informed of many things. You can be a player of all characters.

Let me end with the E.A Filne line, “When a man’s reading is finished, he is finished.”

I will leave here with some of our reading week shots.

This year theme

Reading Schedule

Mass reading

Mass Reading

Reading

And reading

Sunday, September 7, 2014

MRP

See that overwritten MRP. See the original MRP 50/-

The prices of the goods have gone higher than the highest mountain. Shopkeepers are charging more than what is on MRP. They have liberties to fix their own prices. When asked about MRP, they would give you a hundred explanations, making you believe, and pay their fake prices. Firstly, they would start the location of their shops, then the increases of price from their agents, and then, transportation cost like fuel price increases, increase in taxes, labor charges, tires charges, windshield charges, etc and etc, and they would mention the salary hike of the civil servants. They would somehow make you believe, and you come out paying and getting much-unwanted information.

And this is the case in many parts of our country; the government is trying to enforce customers to pay only MRP and shopkeepers are trying to ask more than the MRP. The margin of the price from MRP has a huge difference. For example, they would increase by nu.15 from MRP or double. I am one of the victims, in Zhemgang, Tingtibi, the prices are fixed by themselves. They erased and overwrite the MRP. It’s like overwriting on the notes, and only a fool would accept that overwritten notes. I had to pay nu.15/- for nu.12/- a packet of magi in Tingtibi. Likewise, the prices of rice, oil, sugar, flour, biscuit, etc are overwhelmingly fixed by them. I told them about MRP, only to get that unwanted information. And this is the same here in Tala. People have liberties to fix their own prices. And I don’t know how prices are fixed about those perishable veggies. They have skyrocketed too. I have to pinch my skin.

Inflation has caused serious ripple effects to every civil servant. They have to minimize their diets. Civil servants are sandwiched in between the upper rung and lower rung of people. They are crushed in between to ooze blood from the parched or dried bodies. People try to extract as many as they can from this middle-income group. They don’t sell, they don’t produce, they depend, and they depend heavily on their meager salaries. Look at those shoppers, they cheat, they earn a lot. And…

So, our goods controller must strictly ensure people charging more than MRP, and levy fines to them. If not, we have to pinch for these surprises.

GHN on the Wall

I went to Pashikha MSS yesterday (6/9/14) for judging classes Wall Magazine. It was their yearly wall magazine competition from classes VII to X. It was very fascinating and informative to see many creative articles and arts displayed. I really appreciate their hard works. The theme of the wall magazine was overused clichéd; GNH and Life Skills. There has been a lot of hype. I am a little into them. Because I don’t understand much. GNH has brainwashed many of our students. They talk GNH. They write GNH. But do they really live a GNH philosophized life? This good and original philosophy of GNH by our king mustn’t become unoriginal and gamble away. Anyways I have some hazy photos here.